I use Freshbooks to manage all of my invoicing. I manage projects, log hours, and it allows me to keep a careful track of my business. I’m lucky enough to be connect to the internet when I’m working, but for some companies working out in the field, keeping track of hours has been mostly done on pencil and paper.

I built an application integrating Twilio and Freshbooks to solve this problem. Watch the video below to see my Twilio and Freshbooks time tracking system.

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How it works

Since you can only submit a completed time log to FreshBooks, the initial clock in call is stored in a database on a separate server. When the user calls back to clock out, it compares the clock out time with the saved clock in time, and then totals up the hours worked. After we know how many hours were worked, the full time log gets submitted to FreshBooks.

Altogether, I mashed up a few different technologies, including:

Twilio Voice API

Twilio Transcription API

FreshBooks API

PHP

MySQL

If you’re interested in using this for your company, shoot me a message and I’d be happy to set it up for you, or let you license out the code.

Anonymous

Congrats! I really wanted that iPad…I used SMS to do Time Tracking through Twillio…I think the IVR was a great idea!